[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Cory

People have also blown this out of proportion both on Chief and in response to Frank's blog post. You'd think this is happening at every event and it's the only thing anyone is talking about-not true. There have only been two notable occurrences in FIRST history (at least that I can think of).

This rarely goes down as a true "pick from 3-8 and make them all say no". The only instance I can even recall something close to that happening was Curie this year. Far more often it means strategically picking 1-2 teams (that you would still like to play with!), causing them not to be ably to ally with the best robots when they deem you unworthy and decline, and then picking the best team that you know will say yes to you. It would be irresponsible not to do this if you knew you could not form a strong alliance as the number one seed.

I hope that Frank/FIRST largely ignore the specific advice given in the blog comments, because frankly most suggestions are horrible and will open the floodgates for teams to engage in legitimately nefarious behavior.

On Curie this year, we were the 4th team to have declined 1678.
While I cant speak for the other 3 teams selected/declined ahead of us, I can tell you that it was totally unexpected. In hindsight, maybe we should have accepted? Maybe not?
We didnt scout enough about team 1678, but instead figured to select our own alliance with several teams we had in mind. Having to choose 2nd in the 2nd round was enticing to us as we looked for several key teams we thought would be there to complement our own.
We never had a discussion with 1678 at all during CMP.
However, it definitely was scorched earth in the sense that teams ahead of us definitely had others they wanted to choose instead, if possible.